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Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Hi all
I am amazed by the amount of people that say that they can listen to a tune at a session for the first time and then play along instantly. I think that many of these people have inflated ego's and that only a few are capable of this. Is it generally the case that people listen to the tune the first time around and then realise that they know it, and hence fall in?
I find learning anything by ear almost impossible and wonder what the secret to it is. Advice appreciated
celtic1234
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Nothing to do with ego i'm afraid, just a lot of hard work, practice and experience. Some tunes are easy to pick up some are very difficult and some merely impossible.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I seem to be able to do this pretty well at session, but I can never do it from recordings it is quite odd. Sometimes it just takes a bit of quiet dare I say noodling and one can have the tune.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
There's no "secret" celtic1234. I learn most of my tunes by ear .
Keep listening to a tune often enough, until you're able to lilt/hum/whistle it and the rest should be straightforward.
Some tunes have given me problem bars and that's when I find sheet music useful.
I don't think any player can perform a new tune first time on hearing.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I'm with you Celtic 1234. I can't even believe people can do that. I guess I just don't have the ear or the ear training to do that. I didn't know there were other people like me other there. Maybe we should form a support group?
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
It's a learned skill like anything else.
The more exposed one becomes to the music, the more one recognizes the buildng blocks and patterns all tunes are constructed from. Ear learning is the conscious ability to recognize those bits and translate them to the fingers in "real time".
So, I think a lot of times people pick up a tune "for the first time" they have either heard very similar tunes or the actual tune in question many times before. Something "clicks" and they are able to play it.
For instance, there's a subset of tunes that I have very little difficulty picking up on the fly. Piping jigs in D mixolydian, that revolve essentially around a D maj. triad and drop down to C for the chord change. Just off the top of my head.. .
Trip to Durham
Old Hag you;ve killed me
gander in the Pratie Hole
Hag at the Churn
and about a berjillion variations thereof.
when I listen to albums I consciously try to figure out what key a tune is in (Which you don;t need perfect pitch to do) and what the common scale runs and arpeggios are. It makes learning the tune that much easier either at home or in a session.
A *few* people I know can listen to truly new, somewhat difficult tunes and play them decently by the third or fourth repeat. What a good skill to have!
Another factor is what somebody means when they say "play along." It's possible to noodle ad hoc harmony lines and rhythmic/punchy droning very easily. But it's not really a great idea necessarily.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I only learn tunes by ear, and when I started I remember it took me around 4 full days of rewinding some crap tune, I cant even remember what it was but it was one of the easy ones - St Annes or something. Now, if its an easy tune it'll take me maybe 4 times through, if Ive heard it enough sometimes I can pick it up on the fly at a session. But if its a tough tune it may take me an hour. It depends on how tricky the tune is and how fast the recording is and how often Ive heard the tune. Obviously modern tunes are a little harder as they are often quirky or synocpated etc.
It just takes practise, time and effort.
"I think many of these people have inflated egos" Or maybe Celtic they just take the time to learn, just becaue YOU cant do it - doesnt mean it cant be done.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
If you had been trained as a child to learn music by ear - either through the Suzuki method or something else, or if you are skilled at languages, it would be a lot easier for you.
It is a learned skill, but a lot easier the younger you are.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Bernie and others are right, experience, working at it will do the trick. Also, growing up with the tunes around won't hurt. I wonder if this is similar to bits of the 'Mozart Effect', that the sub-conscious brain picks up patterns (length of phrases, answering phrases, etc) and that phrases often begin with a tonic chord tone....
thus, not 'egoistic' but confident in our hours of practicing, and relaxing, having fun. letting go and letting our brains do what they really can...
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I’ve picked up a few easy tunes, while noodling along, on the third or fourth time through. My son can listen to a tune a few times through, without noodling along, and then later play it very accurately. He’s been able to do it since he was about seven years old. It just makes me mad.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I can pick up easy tunes by ear on the fly at sessions and tunes that I have heard a zillion times. Can't do it with hard tunes or ones I've never heard in my life. Trouble is when I learn a tune this way I usually need to be following someone else who is solid on it many times before I can play it solo or lead it. Like I picked up the Rolling Wave (an easy tune to learn) at sessions and after like five months, I'm solid on it and can play it on my own or start it. If I had sat down with Amazing Slow Downer and learned it at a slow speed phrase by phrase, that would have taken me like a week. There are probably more experienced musicians out there who can learn a tune on the fly and actually have it solid in their memory. I can't do this.
Sometimes I wonder how many tunes I’ve picked up, played once or twice and then forgotten. Probably more than I remember. Without regular sessions to reinforce them, they can fade away.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Many of us who play well by ear didn't do as well in the more conventional music education system.Ear playing wasn't really music and we had to work against it and only play the notes on the page.
It's great to play music where this natural inclination is encouraged.
I'm like most people on this thread,some tunes are very easy to pick up others take more work and some require a bit of help from the dots.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
That's why tunes get played 3 times, isn't it?
First time to think "I like that tune"
Second time to learn it,
Third time to join in.
And i always thought the "suzuki method" was about annoying the Mrs by taking motorbike engines apart and cleaning the important bits in the kitchen sink.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
There are two key skills needed to learn by ear. One is being able to accurately hear and recall the tune. This gets easier the more you do it. It's also easier the more you listen to this music and get familiar with the common phrases and rhythmic and melodic patterns.
The other key skill is the ability to play your chosen instrument. This is often overlooked. The more "at home" you are on your instrument, the easier it will be to pick up tunes quickly by ear.
In both cases, I find that it helps me and people I teach to think not in terms of something being "easy" or "hard" to do, but more in terms of whether it's "familiar" or "unfamiliar." When learning by ear on the fly feels familiar (after years of doing it), it will no longer be hard. Similarly, the more familiar you are with the tunes in the Irish trad repertoire (from listening to them, even if you haven't actually played them all), the easier it will be to pick one up by ear and play along by the third or fourth time through.
I'm convinced that most people pick up music by ear fairly easily. It only takes three or four times on the radio for people to start singing along to most Top 10 hits. Jigs and reels at typical session speeds are a bit trickier--more notes going by at speed--but the underlying skill set is the same.
A few people are genuinely gifted at this. I once played with a jazz guitarist who asked me to teach him some bluegrass tunes. I was playing 5 string banjo and would launch into Billy in the Lowground or Flint Hill Special or Eight More Miles to Louisville, and this guy jumped right in with spot on, tasty back up. I'd play two breaks, and on the third time through he could flat pick a solo that nailed the melody. For his second break, he would improvise around the chord progression. Within two days, he sounded like a veteran bluegrass guitar player, and he could commandingly play about three dozen tunes. Not bad for someone who'd never heard of Flatt and Scruggs or Ralph Stanley....
On the other end of the scale, it took me years and years of trying to learn tunes by ear before it started to click. It didn't come "easy" for me, but now it feels natural, and I seem to pick up tunes just a shade faster than average (compared to other folks at sessions and workshops). The message here is that we each start from our own baseline skill level, and it's possible to get good at it even if our starting point is lower than others'.
One great way to learn is to swap tunes with a friend. When it's just two instruments, you can take things phrase by phrase, at a slower tempo, and really listen, without distraction from other noise.
Also try learning tunes by lilting along to them, and then transfer them to your instrument. If you can sing a tune from ear but have difficulty playing it on your instrument, then it's not "learning by ear" that's a problem. Chances are you need to hone your instrumental skills.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
"a bit of help from the dots" - Some of you people are the most arrogant lot I've ever had the displeasure to come in contact with - or with whom I've ever had the displeasure to come in contact - which ever you prefer. Did Beethovan understand THE DOTS? Did Brahms? Did Stan Kenton? Who cares?!
ITM is some of the most beautiful music ever, but did some poor Irish feather merchant get out his fiddle and play a melancholy tune to lay off his day's sorrow so that you self-aggrandized "ITM EX-S PURTS" could weave your tales of grandeur? I think not!
It seems to me that you should take a look at what this websit purports to do" "keep traditional music alive", and get off your HIGH HORSES, and do just that.
Believe it or not, you few didn't INVENT music! There have been MANY before you, and there will be many after.
Had I come across THE SESSION before already falling in love with Irish Traditional Music, I would've quickly moved on to something else. Even American Oldtime is more pure. (and more Irish) You've missed the boat! Since you've joined the EU, it appears that you've sold out to THE BIG BUCK - or EURO. Just look around you - Ireland is almost gone. The dots? Gimmie a break. There are things far more important. And, I'm not even Irish!
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I've been a backup player(dropped d guitar) for years which has been great fun working around the tunes,but have missed out on playing those melodies (,just can't pick at session speed.)A few months ago I picked up the mandolin-it seems a lot easier. It seems when I hear a tune I hear a rough outline then go to the ABC midi files or tabs to smooth it out.The People I know who can play the tunes right away were born with their instruments under their pillows.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
You think Whsitle is bad try Flute. Seriously though I have been a member of those forums for almost two years, never got into any type of fight with any of them until a couple of days ago, it is really jsut the Flute forum though.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Mmmmm... do I smell noodles?
This thread is about two things; 1) noodling at sessions, and 2) picking up tunes by ear. Good advice has already been given concerning learning to pick up tunes by ear, but the other question about doing so in sessions is the part I'll comment on... naturally.
There are very few people, in my experience, who when they claim to be able to "pick tunes up on the fly" can actually do so. What I've observed is more like the Emperor's New Clothes in reality. It seems that they believe they are able to do this, and to them it might even sound like they are, but outside of their head, for the person sitting next to them -- they aren't. If it's a big loud cacophonous session -- it really doesn't matter. But for smaller sessions in quieter places -- it can be very annoying.
Now, having said that, I have met a couple of people who seem to actually be able to do this convincingly -- but it's always an extremely rare case. I would also like to add that I have picked up many tunes simply by listening at a session, but I've never gone from hearing it for the first time to playing it before the 3rd pass through the tune. For me it happens when the tune is played week after week, and even year after year in some cases before I find myself playing it. I'm not a genius, nor am I idiot savant... so I can't do it instantly. But many tunes have come into my playing without ever having recorded them to be worked out at home. Most of my tunes come from working them out at home, but not all.
So why do people insist on picking up tunes on the fly at sessions? I'm not sure, but I can speculate. If I examine my own reasons for believing I could do this (as I did when I was a beginner,) it was because I didn't want to just be sitting there doing nothing – it felt very awkward. Now-a-days I know most of the tunes, so when one comes up I don't know I don't feel as conspicuous when I stop playing.
After deciding not to attempt picking up tunes on the fly, I have found it easier to enjoy listening to the music when I don't know the tune. This also facilitates the learning by ear process because better listening imprints the tune better in my head. That makes it easier to learn when I come across it at home, or if I end up just playing it after becoming so familiar with it.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
That's true, Jack. Very few people can do that properly. I think many people who claim to be able to do it actually have already learned the tunes they think they've never heard.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Everyone listen to Beebs she speaks sense. Anyone can do it if you put some work in and *listen*. It's perfectly possible to pick up tunes on the fly. It's true that some people sem to be naturally better at it than others though. A muso I play with in Sydney is the fastest I've ever seen at doing this. I played a tune to him a few months back and he joined in, immediately after the 1st time through. It was a reel played at session speed, but he played it back note-perfect, and I know it was because there was only the two of us playing in a quiet room and I was listening closely. Usually I'd have thought that he had already heard the tune, as Slainte said above, but this was my own composition, and one that I'd never played to anyone but myself. I was amazed to say the least.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
a person who attends sessions regulary will notice bits of tunes that sound similar to passages in other tunes so it stands to reason that they will pick up a lot of tunes by ear quickly but there are probably many tunes which would fox them too depending on what instrument they play and what key or setting its played in etc,
dylandew EZ-TIGER you almost sound a little anxious, compulsive and a little obsessive, try this it may help
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
OH NO, NO, NO ..........I FECKIN HATE THIS THREAD!
THE WORLD IS NOW GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY POLLUTED POLLUTED POLLUTED I TELL YOU - BY NOODLING ..................
..........
everyone now thinks, after reading this thread, that it's OK to sit & NOODLE along to all the tunes you don't know,
all night long .
Aaaaaaarrrrggg.......
THE END OF THE ITM WORLD, WE KNEW & LOVED IS NIGH ....
RUN AWAY
RUN AWAY
RUN AWAY............................
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I like the Emperor's New Clothes analogy. Yesterday it occurred to me that some who do this just don't realize how loud they are, even in a noisy session. Sitting and listening is the courteous thing to do. I would not use a session to learn a tune I didn't know. Tape the tune and learn it at home. Or ask another musician to teach you the tune at a later time. Or just listen to that tune each time it comes up in a session.
A point about knowing one's instrument is knowing where exactly is the sound of each note on the instrument. There are times you hear a tune with so many familiar bits that you can actually pick up the exact notes on the fly. Yes, many seasoned musicians really do this.
But if you are only absolutely certain of SOME of the notes, play only those EXACT notes each time they come around and NO other part of the tune. I have seen even Kevin Burke do this.
Another thing about picking up tunes in sessions is that there are often different versions being played simultaneously. Ending up with a wacked out setting due to this is not the same as using variations. It instead shows the person has not properly studied the tune.
Miss Manners says all this on her website of course.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Dylandew - its perfectly obvious that you are not irish - and its obivous you dont have a clue about tunes. Oh well -luckily no one is forcing you to belong to this site.....maybe you should join and American Old time one and keep the "Real" music alive.....
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Hmm, I can't pick a tune up on the first listen through but I can on the second. I've been learning tunes in sessions and jams since I was nine so it's a force of habit now. But I have also learned which tunes I'm not going to be able to pick up during a session and I don't even attempt to pick these kinds of tunes up. I'm selective that way . . .
There's an American Old Time site like this one? Where? I'll join it!
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Yes, it's quite easy to pick many many tunes up on the second time through. The thing is though, the tunes you can do this with, are, by definition, crap tunes.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I guess I'll have to disagree . . . I've picked up a lot of fun tunes in one or two play throughs. I enjoy learning harder tunes, but I don't think that tunes are 'crap' because they are easy to pick up or wonderful because they are harder to play.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Oh sure -- it can be done – you can start picking up tunes on the fly the second time through. I know a guy who learned most of his tunes at the session this way. How do I know? Because we had to put up with it while we were trying to just have fun playing the feckin tunes. He's very happy now with all the tunes he’s learned, but he never seemed to notice or care how it spoiled some of the fun for the rest of us.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
See, that's one of the reasons I'm selective - I do'nt want to ruin anything for anyone else. Of course I picked most of the songs I play this way before I turned 12 so at that point in time the people just liked having someone that young playing with them. Now days I finger the tunes on my fiddle's neck before I try and play it. No noise until I'm sure I can play the tune.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
"Now days I finger the tunes on my fiddle's neck before I try and play it. No noise until I'm sure I can play the tune. "
This is the way the fiddler I work with does it. He doesn't always try it on every new tune he hears because if the tune's tricky he'll listen more before he tries it. If it's a straight forward tune he'll finger it on his fret board like you say and might try it on the 3rd time through. If the rest of us notice this we will usually run the tune a few more times for him. But I've never seen or heard him noodle out a tune he doesn't know.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
That's great for fiddles, mandolins, and other fretted instruments that you can finger silently. It's a little trickier with flutes, whistles, concertinas etc. A lot of people think they can play quietly enough on a flute or whistle to noodle the tune in, but besides missing half the notes, the pitch ends up being flat and it makes all the other flute and whistle players think their own instrument is out of tune. Concertinas project from the sides and the people next to you hear it louder than the player does. Fiddles definitely have an advantage for picking up tunes without disturbing the music. It's also right up by your ear when you do put the bow to it.
Having said all that, I still feel my time is better spent just listening. The tune gets imprinted better and I enjoy it more. Eventually the tune will find it's way to my fingers if I hear it enough. I'm in no big hurry.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I can play some tunes I haven't heard before, first time through - it depends how complicated they are.
It is a matter of knowing the idiom well, so you can "guess" what is coming next and possibly a bit of playing a micro-second later than the leader.
Why do I do it? Because I can - and also there are just too many tunes to learn and not enough time.
I don't do it all night, but I can tell immediately whether I like the tune and want to play it, or not. Afterwards, I do ask for the tune name then try and look it up and learn it or transcribe it into abc.
I learnt how to do it by recording radio programs and writing the tunes down a bar at a time, building up to being able to write 3 or 4 bars down at once - thats the best ear training!
It really p*sses people off when they say "How did you play that tune - I only wrote it today?"
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
"It really p*sses people off when they say "How did you play that tune - I only wrote it today?" "
Ha, that's 'caus they never actually wrote it. They just cobbled it together from bits of other tunes. I wish people who try to write tunes would realise this more and spare us from the ever expanding burden of homogeny
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Probably why I found it so easy to play along - I had heard all the various bits before!
I love it when someone famous (no names mentioned) says - "heres a bit of a 5/4 tune I am writing" - and I play it back to them.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
In my experience a very good test of whether you can pick up tunes by ear is to play with a ceili band for set dancers at least 25 miles from your home town. Then you can guarantee that a high proportion of tunes (at least 50%) will be unknown to you on a first hearing.
It's an odd sensation. You're in a situation where the band is driving along at set dancing speed (about 120) and no prisoners are being taken. And there's no time to think. All you can do is just watch the dancers and the leader, concentrate on the rhythm, and it all mysteriously happens. Fingers and bow take over from the conscious brain, and the music's there. But whether I'm able to recollect any of those tunes the next day is quite q different matter
Picking up tunes by ear at a session I find is rather different. There's not the pressure, for a start, and the time scale for learning is much longer - weeks usually. Learning a tune by ear at sessions is usually a series of successive approximations over several sessions. First of all the general shape of the tune, and then the details get added in as time goes by.
I think there's a fundamental difference between learning a tune by ear at a session and learning it from the dots or from a recording. If you learn by ear then the tune becomes your "own" fairly quickly and you can soon start playing around with it and developing it to your heart's content. If you leqrn from the dots or a recording then you tend to be keyed in to a specific set of notes right from the beginning, and it takes rather longer to free yourself from this constraint and play the tune from within yourself. Especially so if your musical upbringing has been the formal classical route that has been forced on you since childhood.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Geoff, I'm not saying you can't do what you claim, but I have heard people make the same claim and when I sat next to them at a session it wasn't so. Is it delusion, or... or what? (For the ones who can't live up to the claim that is) I suppose the only way we'd be able to separate the delusional from the people who actually CAN do this would be to have a competition with a panel of judges. The contestant's instrument would need to be wired into the judge's ear. Contestants would be judged on accuracy, recall, and the percentage of notes that were correct. I won’t be entering any such competition… but why would I – I don’t claim to be able to pick up tunes like that.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
You'd have to have a number of tunes written specially for the compeition, and only the resident band would know them beforehand. Perhaps this is the only way you could guarantee the competitors are on a level footing.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
"guarantee the competitors are on a level footing." - why would you need to do that Trevor? Are you thinking about the Flute players dribbling equally from either corner of their mouths?
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Can we please, please, please just forget about all this competition! Such an event will only serve to encourage this crazy, nonsensical maddness folks call - picking a tune up at a session! It's just a polite term for the maddening habit of NOODLING - OK!
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
It would require a body of top-secret tunes.
They would have to be learned by a team of classified musicians that would only play them in secret sessions leading up to the competition. There would be bribes and corruption resulting in litigation that would tie up the tunes unless they were leaked. Think of the excitement it would generate in the session when the forbidden tunes came up. People would play the tune and everyone would ooo and ahhh, and when you get asked where you got the tune you could say, “From a man named Bond… James bond.”
(cue theme music) dur tada dur durrrrrrrrrr ta da da dur tada dur durrrrrrrrrr ta da da
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
No problem. The tunes would be "composed" on a random basis by a computer (didn't Mozart write an algorithm for doing just this?) and printed out and played live at sight by a band who happen to be crack sight-readers. The judges would also see the printout, but not, of course, the victims (sorry, competitors).
Should be fun.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Just another thought on this.
Let's face it, anyone who claimed they were able to pick up a tune after only hearing it once or twice at a session, would need to have scored at least 29 out of 30 in that Ear Test Exam some of us tried out here recently!
However, that still wouldn't make it right & proper, or acceptable (in my book) to noodle at sessions, at the expense of others enjoyment!
That just came to mind this morning cause I got an E-Mail from the testers.
They are contacting all the 30/30 ear folk to try & get us to go through yet another test!
Apparently 45,000 folks tried it out!
They didn't say how many scored 30 though!
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Just because when *you* do it is sounds like noodling doesnt mean that it sounds like noodling when some others pick up tunes on the fly. I dont noodle - I have picked up tunes in sessions before, I dont care if you dont believe it cant be done. Ask anyone I play with - I doubt very much you'd find even one that would consider me a noodler.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Oh, so you are accusing me of noodling then, are you - bb? Reaches for lawyers phone no.....
The key phrase here is "to noodle at sessions, at the expense of others enjoyment!" i.e. if you can finger the notes silently on say a fiddle, or mandolin, then perhaps you won't be annoying those on either side of you, but as soon as you are making a noise, then that can only be distracting to those on either side, surely.
So, although it may very well be possible to do this on string instruments, I can't imagine it being possible on wind instruments.
It all seems very frantic & I just don't understand why folks can't just relax & enjoy the tune.
Anyway, if they are such whizz kids at picking tunes up by ear, then surely they'll have it in their heads by the 2nd or 3rd hearing of the tune.
Or they could just record it & learn it all, exactly, in the comfort of their own home.
I can only say that I find it very distracting, annoying & unnecessary for folks to be tweeking, & scratching & scraping & tootling away, while others just want to play a tune.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Well, I'm not sure Ptarmigan - do you annoy people each side of you at a session when noise comes out of your fiddle??? Is that what you mean? I'm very sorry for you then.......it must be hard to stand up and be honest like that...
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I'm not sure what your sessions are like Ptarmigan - but at session I frequent you ask what a tune is and 99.99999% of the time no one knows and they dont know where they got it either. So it is sometimes hard to go back home and "learn the tune in the comfort of your own living room" Anyhow - if you read any of my previous posts at all, I only mention picking up a tune after having heard it numerous times before, not just once through ever.....
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
No bb, folks don't annoy me when they are actually 'playing' the tune bb.
But they do, when they just try to play it, & nearly play it right, but then stop & footre, then start again, then play a wrong phrase, then stop again, then tootle away at it again, & nearly play it right, but then stop & footre, then start again, then play a wrong phrase, then stop again, then tootle away at it again, & nearly play it right, but then stop & footre, then start again, then play a wrong phrase, then stop again, then tootle away at it again, & nearly play it right, but then stop & footre, then start again, then play a wrong phrase, then stop again, then tootle away at it again - ALL NIGHT!
Call me crazy, but I'm afraid I find that annoying.
After that, it's just such a pleasure to sit beside someone who either plays the tune - if they know it, or listens - if they don't.
As for learning the tune, I'll admit most folks at our sessions don't know names either, but I've learned hundreds of tunes by simply taping sessions & learning the tunes by listening to the tape over & over & then carefully learning all the notes.
Surely much more satisfying than almost, maybe, kind of, perhaps, getting a kind of nearly flavour of the thing as it flits past you, as you pluck or toot or frittle or pleep, or squeet away at it.
I'm sure most Noodlers are totally unaware that everyone else can hear them quite clearly.
As an example, a bloke at a session, just last week, leaned over to me & declared that he didn't know the last tune, & that's why he just produced his big low octave D whistle & he just kind of played along, for the fun of it.
He later came back from a trip to the loo with a rather embaressed expresion & told me that someone, at the back of the room, had asked him what the big flute thing was because it had such a nice sound - so in fact everyone did hear him fluffing away, after all!
cringe .......................
I have no doubt, when you pick up a tune bb it is 'done in the best possible taste' - jumps up & crosses legs in flamboyant fashion! (name that comedian?)
All I'm saying is, I don't think it's a great idea to be recommending this method to everyone, especially newcomers to ITM.
But hey, it's just my own weird way of thinking!
There's more than one way to skin a French Cat with Avian Flu!
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
All Night???
Holy Cow Ptarmigan - what youre actually saying is that nobody you play with knows any tunes? Is that right? Gee wiz, you know, that would be very annoying indeed. Maybe you should find a new session.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Now now... easy you two. I'm in complete agreement with Dick on this point. (surprise surprise) I also sympathize with bb. My experience has been that the same people who don't know the names of the tunes they play or where they got them are going to be just as annoyed by people noodling on tunes they don't know. The solution is simple -- get a recording device. This will allow you to annoy no one in the safety and comfort of your own home.
When people ask me names of tunes and or where I got them -- I'm happy to provide the helpful information -- even though it makes me appear rather anorak-like. But I prefer that to having them noodle in my ear while I'm trying to enjoy playing the tune.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
But I dont Agree with people noodling either - especially if they dont have a clue what they are doing and they are annoying. I'm just saying that some people can just pick up tunes on the fly - Ive seen it done...obviously not everyone can do it or should do it. Especially if they are loud, annoying and crap.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Pt, I have the majority of my tunes straight from sessions, (rather than recordings or music). How is it done? I think tunes generally fall into three categories ...
1. Those that are so derivative and non de-script that they truly are learnable in one time through. Though simultaneously utterly forgettable. These are the most common.
2. Those that are interesting enough to warrant listening too. These usually get played often enough for them to sink into your psyche and you just suddenly realize you can play them, with no effort. (some take longer than others)
3. Tunes you think "wow" and go home and seek out. This generally happens less and less the older you get and the more tunes you know.
Actually, there is a fourth and, in my view, worst kind. Those that are so complicated you could never in a million years learn them on the fly but are also, utterly devoid of any musical merit whatsoever. A lot of Scottish tunes are like this.
So yes, I agree. You should never ever play along with a tune you don't know. (But some tunes are so crap you can know them, even after one hearing. And other tunes you may never have actually played them ever in your life before, but because you do "know" them, you can play them)
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
OK MG, so groups 1 & 4 are not worth learning, so let's ignore those, cause you wouldn't be bothered noodling to those anyway.
Group 3 you do learn in the privy.
Group 2 then are the only ones you, personally would actually be likely to play along with, without learning them at home, but by your very admission you sensibly wait until you have them learned in your head, which may well take a number of hearings.
Yeah, that sounds about right to me, given that you have been playing since Adam was a boy scout & have no doubt, by this stage developed a keen ear.
"nobody you play with knows any tunes?" - now, now bb, I think your just being a little bit silly & provocative there.
As you well know I didn't say that.
If anything, it's them that should be moving to find better musicians than me to play with, but that's another story!
As is often the case with discussions here, two folks slang it out back & forth & then realise that they are basically saying the same thing, only in different ways.
This is probably why 'Uncle Button' is on both our sides, at the same time! ?
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I am being silly and provocative. And we are saying the same thing. But I'd thought you'd appreciate me being provacative.....after all - you seem quitet good at it as well
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I'm definitely on the side that opposes noodling -- I've been very consistent in this. But I do understand that there are people more adept at picking up tunes in sessions than others for a variety of reasons. The instrument they play, their experience and perhaps some innate ability comes into play. But they are far overshadowed by clueless and or delusional players who insist on doing it and insist they have the ability. For this reason, unless I've seen someone do it myself -- a red flag goes up when I hear this claim.
Like MG many tunes I know were learned by hearing them over and over in sessions until I seemed to know them without ever having to learn them at home from a recording. (I happen to love the simple little tunes that this most often happens with,) but a tune like "In Memory of Michael Coleman" in G dorian, is going to require serious work at home before I attempt it on my concertina in public. There are loads of tunes that working out at home is the only option for -- with my chosen instruments anyway. But I'm always amazed at how some folks find no distinction and are happy to noodle while the rest of us are trying to enjoy playing the tune’s regardless of their complexity. It puts me off the tune when they do this and annoys the hell out of me.
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
correct. And part of me reckon's they might be better off playing the fcuking bodhran, at least the "notes' on the bodhran won't clash. So really, when you think about it, they are no better than bodhran players.
The remedy, however, is simple. Tell them to shut up.
Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Hi all
I am amazed by the amount of people that say that they can listen to a tune at a session for the first time and then play along instantly. I think that many of these people have inflated ego's and that only a few are capable of this. Is it generally the case that people listen to the tune the first time around and then realise that they know it, and hence fall in?
I find learning anything by ear almost impossible and wonder what the secret to it is. Advice appreciated
celtic1234
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by Celtic1234
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Nothing to do with ego i'm afraid, just a lot of hard work, practice and experience. Some tunes are easy to pick up some are very difficult and some merely impossible.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by Bernie
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I seem to be able to do this pretty well at session, but I can never do it from recordings it is quite odd. Sometimes it just takes a bit of quiet dare I say noodling and one can have the tune.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by Unseen122
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
There's no "secret" celtic1234. I learn most of my tunes by ear .
Keep listening to a tune often enough, until you're able to lilt/hum/whistle it and the rest should be straightforward.
Some tunes have given me problem bars and that's when I find sheet music useful.
I don't think any player can perform a new tune first time on hearing.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by Strathfoyle
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
They can noodle it though.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by Strathfoyle
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I'm with you Celtic 1234. I can't even believe people can do that. I guess I just don't have the ear or the ear training to do that. I didn't know there were other people like me other there. Maybe we should form a support group?
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by justwhistle
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
It's a learned skill like anything else.
The more exposed one becomes to the music, the more one recognizes the buildng blocks and patterns all tunes are constructed from. Ear learning is the conscious ability to recognize those bits and translate them to the fingers in "real time".
So, I think a lot of times people pick up a tune "for the first time" they have either heard very similar tunes or the actual tune in question many times before. Something "clicks" and they are able to play it.
For instance, there's a subset of tunes that I have very little difficulty picking up on the fly. Piping jigs in D mixolydian, that revolve essentially around a D maj. triad and drop down to C for the chord change. Just off the top of my head.. .
Trip to Durham
Old Hag you;ve killed me
gander in the Pratie Hole
Hag at the Churn
and about a berjillion variations thereof.
when I listen to albums I consciously try to figure out what key a tune is in (Which you don;t need perfect pitch to do) and what the common scale runs and arpeggios are. It makes learning the tune that much easier either at home or in a session.
A *few* people I know can listen to truly new, somewhat difficult tunes and play them decently by the third or fourth repeat. What a good skill to have!
Another factor is what somebody means when they say "play along." It's possible to noodle ad hoc harmony lines and rhythmic/punchy droning very easily. But it's not really a great idea necessarily.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by wormdiet
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I only learn tunes by ear, and when I started I remember it took me around 4 full days of rewinding some crap tune, I cant even remember what it was but it was one of the easy ones - St Annes or something. Now, if its an easy tune it'll take me maybe 4 times through, if Ive heard it enough sometimes I can pick it up on the fly at a session. But if its a tough tune it may take me an hour. It depends on how tricky the tune is and how fast the recording is and how often Ive heard the tune. Obviously modern tunes are a little harder as they are often quirky or synocpated etc.
It just takes practise, time and effort.
"I think many of these people have inflated egos" Or maybe Celtic they just take the time to learn, just becaue YOU cant do it - doesnt mean it cant be done.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
If you had been trained as a child to learn music by ear - either through the Suzuki method or something else, or if you are skilled at languages, it would be a lot easier for you.
It is a learned skill, but a lot easier the younger you are.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by elvis2440
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Bernie and others are right, experience, working at it will do the trick. Also, growing up with the tunes around won't hurt. I wonder if this is similar to bits of the 'Mozart Effect', that the sub-conscious brain picks up patterns (length of phrases, answering phrases, etc) and that phrases often begin with a tonic chord tone....
thus, not 'egoistic' but confident in our hours of practicing, and relaxing, having fun. letting go and letting our brains do what they really can...
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by suzique
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I’ve picked up a few easy tunes, while noodling along, on the third or fourth time through. My son can listen to a tune a few times through, without noodling along, and then later play it very accurately. He’s been able to do it since he was about seven years old. It just makes me mad.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by Bob himself
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I can pick up easy tunes by ear on the fly at sessions and tunes that I have heard a zillion times. Can't do it with hard tunes or ones I've never heard in my life. Trouble is when I learn a tune this way I usually need to be following someone else who is solid on it many times before I can play it solo or lead it. Like I picked up the Rolling Wave (an easy tune to learn) at sessions and after like five months, I'm solid on it and can play it on my own or start it. If I had sat down with Amazing Slow Downer and learned it at a slow speed phrase by phrase, that would have taken me like a week. There are probably more experienced musicians out there who can learn a tune on the fly and actually have it solid in their memory. I can't do this.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by TheSilverSpear
How many have you forgotten?
Sometimes I wonder how many tunes I’ve picked up, played once or twice and then forgotten. Probably more than I remember. Without regular sessions to reinforce them, they can fade away.
# Posted on February 24th 2006 by Bob himself
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Many of us who play well by ear didn't do as well in the more conventional music education system.Ear playing wasn't really music and we had to work against it and only play the notes on the page.
It's great to play music where this natural inclination is encouraged.
I'm like most people on this thread,some tunes are very easy to pick up others take more work and some require a bit of help from the dots.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by McMandolin
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
That's why tunes get played 3 times, isn't it?
First time to think "I like that tune"
Second time to learn it,
Third time to join in.
And i always thought the "suzuki method" was about annoying the Mrs by taking motorbike engines apart and cleaning the important bits in the kitchen sink.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Wurzel
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
There are two key skills needed to learn by ear. One is being able to accurately hear and recall the tune. This gets easier the more you do it. It's also easier the more you listen to this music and get familiar with the common phrases and rhythmic and melodic patterns.
The other key skill is the ability to play your chosen instrument. This is often overlooked. The more "at home" you are on your instrument, the easier it will be to pick up tunes quickly by ear.
In both cases, I find that it helps me and people I teach to think not in terms of something being "easy" or "hard" to do, but more in terms of whether it's "familiar" or "unfamiliar." When learning by ear on the fly feels familiar (after years of doing it), it will no longer be hard. Similarly, the more familiar you are with the tunes in the Irish trad repertoire (from listening to them, even if you haven't actually played them all), the easier it will be to pick one up by ear and play along by the third or fourth time through.
I'm convinced that most people pick up music by ear fairly easily. It only takes three or four times on the radio for people to start singing along to most Top 10 hits. Jigs and reels at typical session speeds are a bit trickier--more notes going by at speed--but the underlying skill set is the same.
A few people are genuinely gifted at this. I once played with a jazz guitarist who asked me to teach him some bluegrass tunes. I was playing 5 string banjo and would launch into Billy in the Lowground or Flint Hill Special or Eight More Miles to Louisville, and this guy jumped right in with spot on, tasty back up. I'd play two breaks, and on the third time through he could flat pick a solo that nailed the melody. For his second break, he would improvise around the chord progression. Within two days, he sounded like a veteran bluegrass guitar player, and he could commandingly play about three dozen tunes. Not bad for someone who'd never heard of Flatt and Scruggs or Ralph Stanley....
On the other end of the scale, it took me years and years of trying to learn tunes by ear before it started to click. It didn't come "easy" for me, but now it feels natural, and I seem to pick up tunes just a shade faster than average (compared to other folks at sessions and workshops). The message here is that we each start from our own baseline skill level, and it's possible to get good at it even if our starting point is lower than others'.
One great way to learn is to swap tunes with a friend. When it's just two instruments, you can take things phrase by phrase, at a slower tempo, and really listen, without distraction from other noise.
Also try learning tunes by lilting along to them, and then transfer them to your instrument. If you can sing a tune from ear but have difficulty playing it on your instrument, then it's not "learning by ear" that's a problem. Chances are you need to hone your instrumental skills.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Will CPT
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
"a bit of help from the dots" - Some of you people are the most arrogant lot I've ever had the displeasure to come in contact with - or with whom I've ever had the displeasure to come in contact - which ever you prefer. Did Beethovan understand THE DOTS? Did Brahms? Did Stan Kenton? Who cares?!
ITM is some of the most beautiful music ever, but did some poor Irish feather merchant get out his fiddle and play a melancholy tune to lay off his day's sorrow so that you self-aggrandized "ITM EX-S PURTS" could weave your tales of grandeur? I think not!
It seems to me that you should take a look at what this websit purports to do" "keep traditional music alive", and get off your HIGH HORSES, and do just that.
Believe it or not, you few didn't INVENT music! There have been MANY before you, and there will be many after.
Had I come across THE SESSION before already falling in love with Irish Traditional Music, I would've quickly moved on to something else. Even American Oldtime is more pure. (and more Irish) You've missed the boat! Since you've joined the EU, it appears that you've sold out to THE BIG BUCK - or EURO. Just look around you - Ireland is almost gone. The dots? Gimmie a break. There are things far more important. And, I'm not even Irish!
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by dylandew
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Is it a full moon today? Glad I got my daily recommended dose of coffee before reading the yellow board today. . .
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by wormdiet
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I've been a backup player(dropped d guitar) for years which has been great fun working around the tunes,but have missed out on playing those melodies (,just can't pick at session speed.)A few months ago I picked up the mandolin-it seems a lot easier. It seems when I hear a tune I hear a rough outline then go to the ABC midi files or tabs to smooth it out.The People I know who can play the tunes right away were born with their instruments under their pillows.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by dorian
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Encumencial Matter, not just here, but Chiff and Fipple too.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Unseen122
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
You think Whsitle is bad try Flute. Seriously though I have been a member of those forums for almost two years, never got into any type of fight with any of them until a couple of days ago, it is really jsut the Flute forum though.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Unseen122
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Mmmmm... do I smell noodles?
This thread is about two things; 1) noodling at sessions, and 2) picking up tunes by ear. Good advice has already been given concerning learning to pick up tunes by ear, but the other question about doing so in sessions is the part I'll comment on... naturally.
There are very few people, in my experience, who when they claim to be able to "pick tunes up on the fly" can actually do so. What I've observed is more like the Emperor's New Clothes in reality. It seems that they believe they are able to do this, and to them it might even sound like they are, but outside of their head, for the person sitting next to them -- they aren't. If it's a big loud cacophonous session -- it really doesn't matter. But for smaller sessions in quieter places -- it can be very annoying.
Now, having said that, I have met a couple of people who seem to actually be able to do this convincingly -- but it's always an extremely rare case. I would also like to add that I have picked up many tunes simply by listening at a session, but I've never gone from hearing it for the first time to playing it before the 3rd pass through the tune. For me it happens when the tune is played week after week, and even year after year in some cases before I find myself playing it. I'm not a genius, nor am I idiot savant... so I can't do it instantly. But many tunes have come into my playing without ever having recorded them to be worked out at home. Most of my tunes come from working them out at home, but not all.
So why do people insist on picking up tunes on the fly at sessions? I'm not sure, but I can speculate. If I examine my own reasons for believing I could do this (as I did when I was a beginner,) it was because I didn't want to just be sitting there doing nothing – it felt very awkward. Now-a-days I know most of the tunes, so when one comes up I don't know I don't feel as conspicuous when I stop playing.
After deciding not to attempt picking up tunes on the fly, I have found it easier to enjoy listening to the music when I don't know the tune. This also facilitates the learning by ear process because better listening imprints the tune better in my head. That makes it easier to learn when I come across it at home, or if I end up just playing it after becoming so familiar with it.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
That's true, Jack. Very few people can do that properly. I think many people who claim to be able to do it actually have already learned the tunes they think they've never heard.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by slainte
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Everyone listen to Beebs she speaks sense. Anyone can do it if you put some work in and *listen*. It's perfectly possible to pick up tunes on the fly. It's true that some people sem to be naturally better at it than others though. A muso I play with in Sydney is the fastest I've ever seen at doing this. I played a tune to him a few months back and he joined in, immediately after the 1st time through. It was a reel played at session speed, but he played it back note-perfect, and I know it was because there was only the two of us playing in a quiet room and I was listening closely. Usually I'd have thought that he had already heard the tune, as Slainte said above, but this was my own composition, and one that I'd never played to anyone but myself. I was amazed to say the least.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Dow
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I suspect the tune is called "Bad Boy, No Biscuit."
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by slainte
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
It was probably some dag tune.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
a person who attends sessions regulary will notice bits of tunes that sound similar to passages in other tunes so it stands to reason that they will pick up a lot of tunes by ear quickly but there are probably many tunes which would fox them too depending on what instrument they play and what key or setting its played in etc,
dylandew EZ-TIGER you almost sound a little anxious, compulsive and a little obsessive, try this it may help
http://sites.the-protagonist.net/funny/prozac.jpg
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Ripthecalico
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
OH NO, NO, NO ..........I FECKIN HATE THIS THREAD!
THE WORLD IS NOW GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY POLLUTED POLLUTED POLLUTED I TELL YOU - BY NOODLING ..................
..........
everyone now thinks, after reading this thread, that it's OK to sit & NOODLE along to all the tunes you don't know,
all night long .
Aaaaaaarrrrggg.......
THE END OF THE ITM WORLD, WE KNEW & LOVED IS NIGH ....
RUN AWAY
RUN AWAY
RUN AWAY............................
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
What is wrong with just sitting & LISTENING?
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I like the Emperor's New Clothes analogy. Yesterday it occurred to me that some who do this just don't realize how loud they are, even in a noisy session. Sitting and listening is the courteous thing to do. I would not use a session to learn a tune I didn't know. Tape the tune and learn it at home. Or ask another musician to teach you the tune at a later time. Or just listen to that tune each time it comes up in a session.
A point about knowing one's instrument is knowing where exactly is the sound of each note on the instrument. There are times you hear a tune with so many familiar bits that you can actually pick up the exact notes on the fly. Yes, many seasoned musicians really do this.
But if you are only absolutely certain of SOME of the notes, play only those EXACT notes each time they come around and NO other part of the tune. I have seen even Kevin Burke do this.
Another thing about picking up tunes in sessions is that there are often different versions being played simultaneously. Ending up with a wacked out setting due to this is not the same as using variations. It instead shows the person has not properly studied the tune.
Miss Manners says all this on her website of course.
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by LH
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Dylandew - its perfectly obvious that you are not irish - and its obivous you dont have a clue about tunes. Oh well -luckily no one is forcing you to belong to this site.....maybe you should join and American Old time one and keep the "Real" music alive.....
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Dylandew - time for some good old Mountain Dew I think:
http://members.aol.com/seanborg/mtdew/mtdew1.htm
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Hmm, I can't pick a tune up on the first listen through but I can on the second. I've been learning tunes in sessions and jams since I was nine so it's a force of habit now. But I have also learned which tunes I'm not going to be able to pick up during a session and I don't even attempt to pick these kinds of tunes up. I'm selective that way . . .
There's an American Old Time site like this one? Where? I'll join it!
# Posted on February 25th 2006 by musicfan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
musicfan: For an Old-Time discussion site, try:
http://forum.sugarinthegourd.com
For tunes, there are lots of sites that a search will turn up.
# Posted on February 26th 2006 by Mando Johnny
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Yes, it's quite easy to pick many many tunes up on the second time through. The thing is though, the tunes you can do this with, are, by definition, crap tunes.
# Posted on February 26th 2006 by llig leahcim
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I guess I'll have to disagree . . . I've picked up a lot of fun tunes in one or two play throughs. I enjoy learning harder tunes, but I don't think that tunes are 'crap' because they are easy to pick up or wonderful because they are harder to play.
Johnny - thanks I'll check that out.
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by musicfan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Oh sure -- it can be done – you can start picking up tunes on the fly the second time through. I know a guy who learned most of his tunes at the session this way. How do I know? Because we had to put up with it while we were trying to just have fun playing the feckin tunes. He's very happy now with all the tunes he’s learned, but he never seemed to notice or care how it spoiled some of the fun for the rest of us.
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
See, that's one of the reasons I'm selective - I do'nt want to ruin anything for anyone else. Of course I picked most of the songs I play this way before I turned 12 so at that point in time the people just liked having someone that young playing with them. Now days I finger the tunes on my fiddle's neck before I try and play it. No noise until I'm sure I can play the tune.
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by musicfan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Hmm, thanks Michael, I'll remember that next time I stick up for you online
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by Dow
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
"Now days I finger the tunes on my fiddle's neck before I try and play it. No noise until I'm sure I can play the tune. "
This is the way the fiddler I work with does it. He doesn't always try it on every new tune he hears because if the tune's tricky he'll listen more before he tries it. If it's a straight forward tune he'll finger it on his fret board like you say and might try it on the 3rd time through. If the rest of us notice this we will usually run the tune a few more times for him. But I've never seen or heard him noodle out a tune he doesn't know.
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Yep, that's my modus operandus. Finger lots, bow little, play only the stuff I know that I can handle!
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by musicfan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
That's great for fiddles, mandolins, and other fretted instruments that you can finger silently. It's a little trickier with flutes, whistles, concertinas etc. A lot of people think they can play quietly enough on a flute or whistle to noodle the tune in, but besides missing half the notes, the pitch ends up being flat and it makes all the other flute and whistle players think their own instrument is out of tune. Concertinas project from the sides and the people next to you hear it louder than the player does. Fiddles definitely have an advantage for picking up tunes without disturbing the music. It's also right up by your ear when you do put the bow to it.
Having said all that, I still feel my time is better spent just listening. The tune gets imprinted better and I enjoy it more. Eventually the tune will find it's way to my fingers if I hear it enough. I'm in no big hurry.
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I can play some tunes I haven't heard before, first time through - it depends how complicated they are.
It is a matter of knowing the idiom well, so you can "guess" what is coming next and possibly a bit of playing a micro-second later than the leader.
Why do I do it? Because I can - and also there are just too many tunes to learn and not enough time.
I don't do it all night, but I can tell immediately whether I like the tune and want to play it, or not. Afterwards, I do ask for the tune name then try and look it up and learn it or transcribe it into abc.
I learnt how to do it by recording radio programs and writing the tunes down a bar at a time, building up to being able to write 3 or 4 bars down at once - thats the best ear training!
It really p*sses people off when they say "How did you play that tune - I only wrote it today?"
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by geoffwright
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
"It really p*sses people off when they say "How did you play that tune - I only wrote it today?" "
Ha, that's 'caus they never actually wrote it. They just cobbled it together from bits of other tunes. I wish people who try to write tunes would realise this more and spare us from the ever expanding burden of homogeny
# Posted on February 27th 2006 by llig leahcim
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Probably why I found it so easy to play along - I had heard all the various bits before!
I love it when someone famous (no names mentioned) says - "heres a bit of a 5/4 tune I am writing" - and I play it back to them.
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by geoffwright
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
In my experience a very good test of whether you can pick up tunes by ear is to play with a ceili band for set dancers at least 25 miles from your home town. Then you can guarantee that a high proportion of tunes (at least 50%) will be unknown to you on a first hearing.
It's an odd sensation. You're in a situation where the band is driving along at set dancing speed (about 120) and no prisoners are being taken. And there's no time to think. All you can do is just watch the dancers and the leader, concentrate on the rhythm, and it all mysteriously happens. Fingers and bow take over from the conscious brain, and the music's there. But whether I'm able to recollect any of those tunes the next day is quite q different matter
Picking up tunes by ear at a session I find is rather different. There's not the pressure, for a start, and the time scale for learning is much longer - weeks usually. Learning a tune by ear at sessions is usually a series of successive approximations over several sessions. First of all the general shape of the tune, and then the details get added in as time goes by.
I think there's a fundamental difference between learning a tune by ear at a session and learning it from the dots or from a recording. If you learn by ear then the tune becomes your "own" fairly quickly and you can soon start playing around with it and developing it to your heart's content. If you leqrn from the dots or a recording then you tend to be keyed in to a specific set of notes right from the beginning, and it takes rather longer to free yourself from this constraint and play the tune from within yourself. Especially so if your musical upbringing has been the formal classical route that has been forced on you since childhood.
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by lazyhound
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Geoff, I'm not saying you can't do what you claim, but I have heard people make the same claim and when I sat next to them at a session it wasn't so. Is it delusion, or... or what? (For the ones who can't live up to the claim that is) I suppose the only way we'd be able to separate the delusional from the people who actually CAN do this would be to have a competition with a panel of judges. The contestant's instrument would need to be wired into the judge's ear. Contestants would be judged on accuracy, recall, and the percentage of notes that were correct. I won’t be entering any such competition… but why would I – I don’t claim to be able to pick up tunes like that.
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
You'd have to have a number of tunes written specially for the compeition, and only the resident band would know them beforehand. Perhaps this is the only way you could guarantee the competitors are on a level footing.
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by lazyhound
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
"guarantee the competitors are on a level footing." - why would you need to do that Trevor? Are you thinking about the Flute players dribbling equally from either corner of their mouths?
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
But who would you get to write the tunes? That omnipresent eedjit I mentioned earlier who just cobbles together tunes from bits of other tunes?
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by llig leahcim
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Can we please, please, please just forget about all this competition! Such an event will only serve to encourage this crazy, nonsensical maddness folks call - picking a tune up at a session! It's just a polite term for the maddening habit of NOODLING - OK!
If this nonsense goes on much longer, I'll be forced to bring in my Dog: http://www.clipartguide.com/_pages/0060-0505-0918-3549.html
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
And there I was thinking it could be yet another competition in the All Ireland.
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by lazyhound
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
It would require a body of top-secret tunes.
They would have to be learned by a team of classified musicians that would only play them in secret sessions leading up to the competition. There would be bribes and corruption resulting in litigation that would tie up the tunes unless they were leaked. Think of the excitement it would generate in the session when the forbidden tunes came up. People would play the tune and everyone would ooo and ahhh, and when you get asked where you got the tune you could say, “From a man named Bond… James bond.”
(cue theme music) dur tada dur durrrrrrrrrr ta da da dur tada dur durrrrrrrrrr ta da da
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
No problem. The tunes would be "composed" on a random basis by a computer (didn't Mozart write an algorithm for doing just this?) and printed out and played live at sight by a band who happen to be crack sight-readers. The judges would also see the printout, but not, of course, the victims (sorry, competitors).
Should be fun.
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by lazyhound
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Ah, but Trevor, people who claim to be able to play up to session tempo and with feeling while sight reading are just delusional....
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# Posted on February 28th 2006 by Will CPT
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I said it would be fun
# Posted on February 28th 2006 by lazyhound
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Just another thought on this.
Let's face it, anyone who claimed they were able to pick up a tune after only hearing it once or twice at a session, would need to have scored at least 29 out of 30 in that Ear Test Exam some of us tried out here recently!
However, that still wouldn't make it right & proper, or acceptable (in my book) to noodle at sessions, at the expense of others enjoyment!
That just came to mind this morning cause I got an E-Mail from the testers.
They are contacting all the 30/30 ear folk to try & get us to go through yet another test!
Apparently 45,000 folks tried it out!
They didn't say how many scored 30 though!
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Just because when *you* do it is sounds like noodling doesnt mean that it sounds like noodling when some others pick up tunes on the fly. I dont noodle - I have picked up tunes in sessions before, I dont care if you dont believe it cant be done. Ask anyone I play with - I doubt very much you'd find even one that would consider me a noodler.
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Oh, so you are accusing me of noodling then, are you - bb? Reaches for lawyers phone no.....
The key phrase here is "to noodle at sessions, at the expense of others enjoyment!" i.e. if you can finger the notes silently on say a fiddle, or mandolin, then perhaps you won't be annoying those on either side of you, but as soon as you are making a noise, then that can only be distracting to those on either side, surely.
So, although it may very well be possible to do this on string instruments, I can't imagine it being possible on wind instruments.
It all seems very frantic & I just don't understand why folks can't just relax & enjoy the tune.
Anyway, if they are such whizz kids at picking tunes up by ear, then surely they'll have it in their heads by the 2nd or 3rd hearing of the tune.
Or they could just record it & learn it all, exactly, in the comfort of their own home.
I can only say that I find it very distracting, annoying & unnecessary for folks to be tweeking, & scratching & scraping & tootling away, while others just want to play a tune.
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Well, I'm not sure Ptarmigan - do you annoy people each side of you at a session when noise comes out of your fiddle??? Is that what you mean? I'm very sorry for you then.......it must be hard to stand up and be honest like that...
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I'm not sure what your sessions are like Ptarmigan - but at session I frequent you ask what a tune is and 99.99999% of the time no one knows and they dont know where they got it either. So it is sometimes hard to go back home and "learn the tune in the comfort of your own living room" Anyhow - if you read any of my previous posts at all, I only mention picking up a tune after having heard it numerous times before, not just once through ever.....
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
No bb, folks don't annoy me when they are actually 'playing' the tune bb.
But they do, when they just try to play it, & nearly play it right, but then stop & footre, then start again, then play a wrong phrase, then stop again, then tootle away at it again, & nearly play it right, but then stop & footre, then start again, then play a wrong phrase, then stop again, then tootle away at it again, & nearly play it right, but then stop & footre, then start again, then play a wrong phrase, then stop again, then tootle away at it again, & nearly play it right, but then stop & footre, then start again, then play a wrong phrase, then stop again, then tootle away at it again - ALL NIGHT!
Call me crazy, but I'm afraid I find that annoying.
After that, it's just such a pleasure to sit beside someone who either plays the tune - if they know it, or listens - if they don't.
As for learning the tune, I'll admit most folks at our sessions don't know names either, but I've learned hundreds of tunes by simply taping sessions & learning the tunes by listening to the tape over & over & then carefully learning all the notes.
Surely much more satisfying than almost, maybe, kind of, perhaps, getting a kind of nearly flavour of the thing as it flits past you, as you pluck or toot or frittle or pleep, or squeet away at it.
I'm sure most Noodlers are totally unaware that everyone else can hear them quite clearly.
As an example, a bloke at a session, just last week, leaned over to me & declared that he didn't know the last tune, & that's why he just produced his big low octave D whistle & he just kind of played along, for the fun of it.
He later came back from a trip to the loo with a rather embaressed expresion & told me that someone, at the back of the room, had asked him what the big flute thing was because it had such a nice sound - so in fact everyone did hear him fluffing away, after all!
cringe .......................
I have no doubt, when you pick up a tune bb it is 'done in the best possible taste' - jumps up & crosses legs in flamboyant fashion! (name that comedian?)
All I'm saying is, I don't think it's a great idea to be recommending this method to everyone, especially newcomers to ITM.
But hey, it's just my own weird way of thinking!
There's more than one way to skin a French Cat with Avian Flu!
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
All Night???
Holy Cow Ptarmigan - what youre actually saying is that nobody you play with knows any tunes? Is that right? Gee wiz, you know, that would be very annoying indeed. Maybe you should find a new session.
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I'm not recommeding - just saying that is possible to do.
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Now now... easy you two. I'm in complete agreement with Dick on this point. (surprise surprise) I also sympathize with bb. My experience has been that the same people who don't know the names of the tunes they play or where they got them are going to be just as annoyed by people noodling on tunes they don't know. The solution is simple -- get a recording device. This will allow you to annoy no one in the safety and comfort of your own home.
When people ask me names of tunes and or where I got them -- I'm happy to provide the helpful information -- even though it makes me appear rather anorak-like. But I prefer that to having them noodle in my ear while I'm trying to enjoy playing the tune.
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
But I dont Agree with people noodling either - especially if they dont have a clue what they are doing and they are annoying. I'm just saying that some people can just pick up tunes on the fly - Ive seen it done...obviously not everyone can do it or should do it. Especially if they are loud, annoying and crap.
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
Pt, I have the majority of my tunes straight from sessions, (rather than recordings or music). How is it done? I think tunes generally fall into three categories ...
1. Those that are so derivative and non de-script that they truly are learnable in one time through. Though simultaneously utterly forgettable. These are the most common.
2. Those that are interesting enough to warrant listening too. These usually get played often enough for them to sink into your psyche and you just suddenly realize you can play them, with no effort. (some take longer than others)
3. Tunes you think "wow" and go home and seek out. This generally happens less and less the older you get and the more tunes you know.
Actually, there is a fourth and, in my view, worst kind. Those that are so complicated you could never in a million years learn them on the fly but are also, utterly devoid of any musical merit whatsoever. A lot of Scottish tunes are like this.
So yes, I agree. You should never ever play along with a tune you don't know. (But some tunes are so crap you can know them, even after one hearing. And other tunes you may never have actually played them ever in your life before, but because you do "know" them, you can play them)
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by llig leahcim
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
OK MG, so groups 1 & 4 are not worth learning, so let's ignore those, cause you wouldn't be bothered noodling to those anyway.
Group 3 you do learn in the privy.
Group 2 then are the only ones you, personally would actually be likely to play along with, without learning them at home, but by your very admission you sensibly wait until you have them learned in your head, which may well take a number of hearings.
Yeah, that sounds about right to me, given that you have been playing since Adam was a boy scout & have no doubt, by this stage developed a keen ear.
"nobody you play with knows any tunes?" - now, now bb, I think your just being a little bit silly & provocative there.
As you well know I didn't say that.
If anything, it's them that should be moving to find better musicians than me to play with, but that's another story!
As is often the case with discussions here, two folks slang it out back & forth & then realise that they are basically saying the same thing, only in different ways.
This is probably why 'Uncle Button' is on both our sides, at the same time! ?
# Posted on March 1st 2006 by Ptarmigan
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I am being silly and provocative. And we are saying the same thing. But I'd thought you'd appreciate me being provacative.....after all - you seem quitet good at it as well
# Posted on March 2nd 2006 by bb
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
I'm definitely on the side that opposes noodling -- I've been very consistent in this. But I do understand that there are people more adept at picking up tunes in sessions than others for a variety of reasons. The instrument they play, their experience and perhaps some innate ability comes into play. But they are far overshadowed by clueless and or delusional players who insist on doing it and insist they have the ability. For this reason, unless I've seen someone do it myself -- a red flag goes up when I hear this claim.
Like MG many tunes I know were learned by hearing them over and over in sessions until I seemed to know them without ever having to learn them at home from a recording. (I happen to love the simple little tunes that this most often happens with,) but a tune like "In Memory of Michael Coleman" in G dorian, is going to require serious work at home before I attempt it on my concertina in public. There are loads of tunes that working out at home is the only option for -- with my chosen instruments anyway. But I'm always amazed at how some folks find no distinction and are happy to noodle while the rest of us are trying to enjoy playing the tune’s regardless of their complexity. It puts me off the tune when they do this and annoys the hell out of me.
# Posted on March 2nd 2006 by Phantom Button
Re: Able to pick tunes up by ear at sessions-or are their ego's getting the better of them???
correct. And part of me reckon's they might be better off playing the fcuking bodhran, at least the "notes' on the bodhran won't clash. So really, when you think about it, they are no better than bodhran players.
The remedy, however, is simple. Tell them to shut up.
# Posted on March 2nd 2006 by llig leahcim